Shortly after 9/11, the US government received an extraordinary gift of hundreds
of files on Al Qaeda, crucial data on the activities of radical Islamist cells
throughout the Middle East and Europe and intelligence about future terrorist
plans. These dossiers did not come from Israel or Saudi Arabia, whose kingdom
appeared more concerned at the time with securing safe passage for members of
the bin Laden family living in the United States, but  as Seymour Hersh
revealed in the July 28 New Yorker  from Syria. One CIA analyst told Hersh,
the quality and quantity of information from Syria exceeded the agencys
expectations. Yet, the analyst added, the Syrians got little in
return for it.

What they got instead was an unrelenting Washington-sponsored campaign of vilification.
It began last year, when the Axis of Evil was expanded to include
Syria, largely because Syria  a member of the 1991 coalition against Saddam
Hussein  refused to support a pre-emptive war against Iraq. And it has
culminated in the Syria Accountability Act, approved 33 to 2 by a House committee
on October 8. If the bill passes, Syria will not be able to receive dual
use goods unless it cuts all ties with Hamas and Islamic Jihad (neither
of which is linked to Al Qaeda) and cracks down on Hezbollah (a guerrilla movement
that enjoys wide popular support among Lebanese Shiites); withdraws its troops
from Lebanon; and proves that it is not developing weapons of mass destruction.
Whats more, the President would be directed to choose from a menu of six
additional sanctions, including a freeze on Syrian assets in the United States
and a ban on US exports, except food and medicine.

The committees vote came on the heels of Bushs endorsement of an
Israeli airstrike on a Palestinian training camp outside Damascus, Israels
first assault on Syrian territory since 1974. Never mind that the apparently
moribund camp belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General
Command, not to Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for the October
4 suicide attack in Haifa; or that Israels attack threatened to widen
the already explosive Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Bushs words, Israel
must not feel constrained in terms of defense of the homeland.
The Syria Accountability Act is all but certain to destroy the fledgling cooperation
between US and Syrian intelligence agencies, which have a common interest in
combating Islamic extremism. To sabotage such a relationship would seem downright
perverse, when America is in desperate need of Arab allies in the war
on terrorism. But a perversion of priorities is something we have come
to expect from the Bush Administration, and from the influential neoconservative
clique  many of them closely allied with the Israeli right  shaping
policy in the Pentagon.

In an eerie replay of the buildup to the war on Iraq, the demonization of Syria
has swelled to a chorus in Washington, whose members include not only Republicans
but pro-Israel Democrats like Tom Lantos, the senior Democrat on the House committee
that passed the act. The leading Democratic presidential candidates backed Bushs
support for Israels bombing in Syria. Only months ago we were told that
the road to peace in Jerusalem runs through Baghdad. As resistance
to the US occupation of Iraq grows and the road map continues to crumble, the
neocons are having a much harder time making that argument, so we are now being
told that the twisted road to peace runs through Damascus.

Syria, to be sure, is hardly an appealing regime. A police state run by a tiny
Baathist clique, it deprives its own citizens of the most basic liberties, maintains
thousands of troops in Lebanons Bekaa Valley in violation of UN Resolution
520 and continues to meddle in Lebanons internal affairs. It has also
supported Hezbollahs resistance operations against Israeli
positions in the disputed Shebaa Farms, finding it a useful proxy force with
which to pressure Israel to return the Golan Heights, illegally occupied since
1967. Yet Syria has also played an important role in stabilizing Lebanon since
the civil war  a role quietly appreciated by Washington  and in
encouraging Hezbollahs transformation from a radical militia to a pragmatic
political party. Despite occasional flare-ups, violent incidents on the Lebanese-Israeli
border have been rare since Israels withdrawal in 2000.

The Accountability Act simply ignores this, in a flagrant display of the double
standards of US Middle East policy. How, in good faith, can we call for sanctions
against Syria for its occupation of Lebanon while coddling Israel, whose incomparably
more violent and brutal occupation remains the chief source of troubles in the
Mideast  the principal reason we are not viewed as honest brokers? Moreover,
while claiming to promote democracy in Syria, the act is more likely to strengthen
the hand of the sclerotic Baathist old guard, which can now invoke the threat
of an American war to suppress dissent, and hobble President Bashar Assads
(admittedly inadequate) efforts to pursue reform. The intellectuals who participated
in Syrias short-lived Damascus Spring two years ago will be
further silenced by the act for fear of being associated with a policy that
might have been devised in Tel Aviv.

In a sense, it was. To properly understand the Syria Accountability Act, one
has to go back to a 1996 document, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing
the Realm, drafted by a team of advisers to Benjamin Netanyahu in his
run for prime minister of Israel. The authors included current Bush advisers
Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil,
they wrote, calling for striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and
should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper.
No wonder Perle was delighted by the Israeli strike. It will help the
peace process, he told the Washington Post, adding later that the United
States itself might have to attack Syria.

But what Perle means by helping the peace process is not resolving
the conflict by bringing about a viable, sovereign Palestinian state but rather
 as underscored in A Clean Break transcending
the Arab-Israeli conflict altogether by forcing the Arabs to accept most,
if not all, of Israels territorial conquests and its nuclear hegemony
in the region. This one-sided approach has succeeded only in fueling resentment
against America, as demonstrated most recently by the October 15 bombing of
a US convoy in Gaza that killed three Americans. The attack, which was denounced
by Palestinian leaders, came just hours after the US veto of a Security Council
resolution condemning Israels new security wall, which gobbles
up large swaths of land in the West Bank.

No one doubts that citizens of Syria and Lebanon would benefit from the demise
of the Baathist dictatorship. But making an enemy of Syria will neither lead
to the flowering of Syrian democracy nor bring an end to terror in Israeli cities.
If any state is a breeding ground for terrorists today, it is Iraq, thanks to
Americas reckless war. The absence of stable governance in Mesopotamia
poses far more of a threat to regional security than the presence of an Islamic
Jihad office in Damascus. To be sure, states must be held accountable for fostering
terrorism. What we need now, however, is not a Syria Accountability Act but
an America Accountability Act.